Character and Narratve: Controls and IK handles

The second step of making the demo charcater was to make the controls. It was a pretty streight forwad process, just a matter of making shapes and putting them next to the joint you wish to control. Afterwards it is necessary to colour the controls so its easier to tel which side is which. So usualy it is red for right and blue for left. Everything in the middle is yellow. Since the root control and hips dislocate is in the same place, one of them has to be diffrent in order to tell which is which.

 (creating the controls and naming them)

(Colouring the controls, pink for right and blue for left)

Then I insterted the IK handles on the legs. IK handles stands for Ivenverse Kinematics. There are three types of IK handles with corresponding solvers: Single Chain (SC) Handle, Rotate Plane (RP) Handle, and Spline Handle.

 

(SC/RP Handles used for limbs) 

(Spline Handle used for necks or tails)

• Single Chain (SC) Handle and Rotate Plane (RP) Handle can be used to animate the motion of an articulated figure's limbs, and similar objects.
• Spline Handle can be used to animate the motion of curvy or twisty shapes, such as tails, necks, spines, tentacles, bull-whips, and snakes.
•  

he difference between an Single Chain (SC) Handle and an IK Rotate Plane (RP) Handle is that:

• SC Handle's end effector tries to reach the position and orientation of its IK handle.
• RP Handle's end effector only tries to reach the position of its IK handle.

Notes:

• When you are using SC Handle, to control the orientation of the middle joints, you rotate the IK handle.
• When you are using RP Handle, two vectors, Pole vector and Handle vector, define the plane in which the middle joints lie on.